Health chiefs today said Teesside was failing to beat the battle against obesity after new figures revealed one in four local adults is massively overweight.

Statistics show that more than 75,000 of 288,000 people living in the Tees Valley and County Durham - an astonishing 27.3pc - are dangerously overweight. North Yorkshire follows with 26.1pc.

The region has been identified as the most obese area in the country. The figures come four years after the former Tees Health Authority vowed to crackdown on the problem. It pledged to tackle poverty - believed to be one of the major causes of obesity - when figures then showed 18pc of women and 16pc of men were obese.

A spokeswoman for Tees Valley and County Durham Strategic Health Authority said: "Statistical trends indicate that the rates of obesity among adults are rising in this area. A lot of work is going on locally with organisations to work with people who have problems with their weight."

Professor John Hamilton, based at the Stockton Campus at the University of Durham, believes high obesity levels are a result of economic deprivation and poor education.

The academic director of medicine said: "One of the factors is that there is not a varied choice of diet for some people. There is a tendency among some groups to eat more high-calorie foods rather than fresh fruit and vegetables."

The figures released by the Department of Health show the Body mass Index of people living in the region. BMI is calculated by comparing a weight against height.

Peter Kelly, director of public health for Middlesbrough PCT, said obesity is a lifestyle problem.

He said: "We're tackling obesity as one of our priorities as it is a cause for coronary heart disease and a risk factor for several cancers. It's not as simple as telling people to lose weight, they need to make changes to their lives."

The Trust has recently employed a Lifestyle Co-ordinator to take referrals from doctors for overweight people and look at how to tailor their lives to shed pounds.